Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday February 09, 2010 @12:49PM
from the that's-some-prime-namespace dept.

Vigile writes "Transformers jokes aside, NVIDIA's newest technology offering hopes to radically change the way notebook computers are built and how customers use them. The promise of both extended battery life and high performance mobile computing has seemed like a pipe dream, and even the most recent updates to 'switchable graphics' left much to be desired in terms of the user experience. Having both an integrated and discrete graphics chip in your notebook does little good if you never switch between the two. Optimus allows the system to seamlessly and instantly change between IGP and discrete NVIDIA GPUs based on the task being run, including games, GPU encoding or Flash video playback. Using new software and hardware technology, notebooks using Optimus can power on and pass control to the GPU in a matter of 300ms and power both the GPU and PCIe lanes completely off when not in use. This can be done without being forced to reboot or even close out your applications, making it a hands-free solution for the customer."

I don't think anyone's suggesting you shouldn't get antibiotics for MRSA, provided you can get some it's not resistant to. The issue is that MRSA develop(s)(ed) from over-use of antibiotics for treating things that don't really require them, and by people not completing their courses.

I appreciate and agree with his point, at least as far as I can tell. There are way too many articles out there to read. That's why I use the nonpersons to filter for topics that I care about and use the crowds or quick and sloppy readers to provide perspective and technical intrepetation. For example, I doubt that I would be interested in this book. Many thanks to the quick and sloppy readers for saving my time!

And 1999 was a record breaking year for the music industry; surpassing sales for all time. It also was a time of economic boom. But then that bubble burst.

The same thing happened with radio. Free music was the death knell of the industry! Sales were at an all-time low! Nevermind that little thing called The Great Depression. Radio killed the music industry.

Like I noted, the music industry isn't immune to economic downturn. But look at what they're doing even in this economy (and that's using RIAA's numbers).

How can you be sure that methicillin would not exist? After all the famous antibiotic penicillin came from bread mold.It's not just humans that want/need to kill undesirable bacteria.fungi, bacteria etc have been killing each other for the past billion years or so.

I just got a roku for my parents, and at $100 it does what it needs to just fine. I can see Roku easily adding a USB port and "Media" channel to a future box without touching the pricepoint and doing the same thing all of these other boxes do.

Oh and it doesn't look like that stupid melted cube that D-link is trying to sell.

We were looking at a Roku over the holidays...

The laptop I was using to stream Netflix died on us, and I didn't have enough parts around to make a replacement Netflix box. The Roku looked like a decent device.

Then we noticed the Samsung BD-P1590... Costs more than a Roku, obviously, but it does more too. Plays DVDs, blu-ray discs, Netflix, Blockbuster, Pandora, YouTube...

We wound up buying the Samsung instead of the Roku. Replaced our old DVD player and the dead laptop.

I imagine its possible that a newer compression system could better choose what data was eliminated (while using the same compression format) based on a better understanding of how a human would perceive the outcome. Clearly, if this was the idea behind new compression settings, it did not work at the bit-rates the BBC tried. Not all compression systems (even ones that use the same format of compression) are created equal.

it's no good attacking them based on the fact they export oil. all the climate researchers who advocate AGW have a budget dependant on global warming research funding, do we also attack them and cast doubt on their motives because of it?

No, because they are actually climate scientists. This Russian Institute of Economic Analysis garbage is a Libertarian think-tank, not a scientific organization, and certainly not a climate research institution.

isn't this an issue with the company not purchasing the proper licenses in the appropriate amount of time rather than an issue with DRM?

It's perfectly indicative of how DRM is bad. DRM assumes that everything would work perfectly, all the time. And when it doesn't, for whatever reason, you lose the right to use your own legally owned content. Just like the movie studio, a leagal user of the film, lost their capability. If the movie studios and their limited number of partners with gazillion-dollar pieces of equipment can't make it work, what chance do meaningless slobs like me have?

Answer: none. I need to just assume that sooner or later the content I paid for will just stop working. And that's wrong.

Of course the metal balls would be vaporized and not provide effective shrapnel. Which is what makes me wonder why nukes wouldn't be effective. Ok, there's no shockwave, but there's so much energy involved, if they detonate near the enemy ship, I'd expect the nuke to melt the ship. It's not like you can safely fly your ship close to the sun just because it's not getting buffeted with shockwaves.